Trump's Top Economic Adviser Once Sold Someone a Bunch of Dying Cows

File under: Caring at Goldman Sachs

John Carney reports for Breitbart:

Gary Cohn once purchased a bunch of cows as part of an investment strategy at Goldman Sachs. When he discovered they were starving to death, he traded the cattle position away.
Cohn, who is now the top economic adviser to the White House and a leading candidate to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, had moved to London to help Goldman Sachs expand its commodities trading operation, a unit called J. Aron & Company. Goldman launched the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index in 1991 to track eighteen different raw materials.

In The Secret Club That Rules the World: Inside the Fraternity of Commodities, journalist Kate Kelly tells the story of how Cohn came to purchase the cows, discover their poor condition, and then sell the flawed animals.

Shortly after the GSCI began trading, Cohn arranged to purchase cattle in Colorado to test out the physical commodity underlying one of the contracts the index was now buying on a regular basis. As part of their experiment, Cohn and his boss flew in a small plane over their cattle’s ranch to inspect the goods–only to find the animals starving to death as they stood stranded in several feet of snow. Eyeing the scene, Cohn’s boss told hm to sell the physical cattle positions the minute he got back from New York. Cohn agreed it was a bad trade, and the suffering of the animals left a minimal impression.

Breitbart News confirmed that Cohn did indeed sell the cattle position. According to a person familiar with the situation, the buyer would not have known the cows were in such poor condition...